i ve been messing around cracking my wpa key with backtrack 3. is wpa really that secure? is there a program that will crack a wpa key with out using a word list? still a beginner here, but not a completly. also i am only able to find tutorials for wireless cracking with backtrack 3. is that all it's really good for? if so what else would you suggest? thanks alot.

You could also look at Offensive Security's page, or even ping around on YouTube, and you'll find LOTS of examples of what can be done with BackTrack. Heck, even firing up the tools from the menu will lend to SOME idea of what BackTrack can do... As awesec said, though, I'd start looking at BT4... I've liked the new stuff, so far!

~ hayabusa ~

"All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved." - Sun Tzu, 'The Art of War'

to start off... thanks for the help guys. im downloading backtrack 4 right now. with backtrack 3 i have only really used the wireless hacking tools like airmon-ng, airodump-ng, etc... i saw a thing on youtube were they were sniffing pictures and one where someone cracked and ftp password with a word list. thats all the questions i had for the moment i guess. thanks again.

WPA with AES is still pretty good, WPA with TKIP has issues WPA2 is the current best offerings.

As with all things, if you use a simple password, its going to be popable by a decent wordlist.

Cracking WPA is based on the SSID and the password / passphrase. The best thing about WPA cracking is you grab the handshake and away you go, not like the old days of WEP cracking.

Rainbow tables speed things up alot, so this is something worth looking at also.I have recently been looking into CUDA, and I am planning on doing something with this in the lab soon, and will most likely write a blog post on it. Should see at least a 5x increase in cracking speed.

The BackTrack distro has many many tools, and everything has been compiled to be interoperable, its really worth a look. Wireless attack is just one function possible.

As with everything, given enough knowledge and time, anything can be popped in theory.